Patients and surgeons have long been interested in alternatives to eyeglasses to compensate for eye abnormalities. These alternatives include for example contact lenses, radial keratotomy, LASIK or laser vision correction surgery, etc. However, such alternatives are not without their drawbacks and deficiencies. For example, LASIK surgery has correction power limitations, can cause weakening of a patient's cornea, and can induce other complications (e.g., vision fluctuation, halos, glare, dry eye, etc.).
Accordingly, intraocular lenses (IOLs) that can be implanted into the eye have become an increasingly popular alternative for providing correction, particularly for patients for whom LASIK surgery is not an option. An IOL is a lens surgically implanted within the eye and usually comprises a lens and one or more haptics, which serve to affix the lens to the eye and hold the lens in place. There are a couple of different types of intraocular lenses including phakic intraocular lenses and aphakic intraocular lenses. IOLs are usually surgically positioned within the anterior chamber of the eye or between the iris and crystalline lens, and many are affixed in the angle of the eye or the anterior surface of the iris. An IOL can be placed over, and work with, an existing natural lens of an eye to modify the eye's optical power and performance, and in particular to correct for errors in the eye's focusing power, such as presbyopic refraction error and/or myopic or hyperopia refraction error.
However, some IOLs require multiple incisions, large incisions, and/or a multi-handed simultaneous ambidextrous surgical technique (e.g., two-handed, three-handed or requiring multiple instrument passes from hand-to-hand) to insert and attach to an iris or require special sizing (e.g., implants placed between the human crystalline lens and iris) not know until the time or surgery. Further, the means used to affix the IOL within the eye is typically designed to ensure fixation and prevent unintentional detachment, and as a result, the fixation means may inflict significant tissue damage to the iris and/or be difficult to remove. This may contribute to surgical or clinical failures of some IOLs, which could include lens insertion and attachment problems, intraocular or iris bleeding, inflammation, endothelial cell loss, pupil deformation, or lens induced glaucoma. Thus, many of the current IOLs are surgically difficult to insert and affix, require large incisions within the cornea for surgical access, are difficult to remove, and/or lead to complications as a result of iris tissue aggravation and damage and/or corneal endothelial cell loss.